It should come as no surprise then, that Hoft is allowing racism to flourish on his blog in the wake of the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin, all in the name of "page views." Here's a sampling of the racist comments, pining for the good old days of the n-word, promoting racist sties like Stormfront and the Council of Conservative Citizens, and cheering for a race war.

Note that despite this openly-racist garbage frequently being pointed out, Jim Hoft never does anything to condemn these racist comments or to let his commenters know that they are not acceptable. If Hoft made it clear that he won't stand for open racists on his site and thinks they're despicable, do you think they'd keep coming back? I guess we'll never know. Thanks KMOX!

Monday, March 19, 2012

For those that have not heard, last Thursday, during the first night of the Occupy the Midwest Regional Conference, police greatly escalated their method of dealing with the movement by brutally assaulting attendees that had the audacity to cross the street. After an unsuccessful attempt to set up a physical occupation at Reservoir Park, participants decided to march down Grand at which point they were set upon by the Saint Louis police force.

Regardless of what you feel about the Occupy movement, or even what you feel about brazenly breaking park curfew laws (traditionally one of the most heinous and violent crimes), there is no excuse for the actions of the Saint Louis police force. 14 or 15 people were arrested, some pepper sprayed, tazed, beaten bloody, and then falsely accused of assaulting the cops that clearly wanted to teach them a lesson. Any use of the word "clash" by media outlets to describe what happened is unacceptably misleading, as it was a completely one-sided affair in terms of the violence done.

About the police car's windshield: that was a windshield. The other things damaged that night were faces, skulls, jaws, and fingers. If you are confused about my description of the one-sidedness of violence now, then that's almost certainly because we have different notions of what violence is.

If there is any good to come of this event, it's that people can wake up and see that the police force is just another example of an institution that is dangerously broken in terms of its function of protecting the public. And if you view police as one tool designed to protect and uphold a dangerous and unjust economic and political system, then you understand it's clearly trying its best. This isn't anything new to people that have experienced this sort of injustice before, whether on occasion or systematically, and it is good to remember that while moving forward.

Among the people I've talked to, the events of Thursday night have escalated things to a degree such that we now all feel changed. I've seen my fair share of police lines in front of Peabody Energy and Bank of America downtown, but I was seeing them with different eyes during this past Friday'sactions. Just as we need to create our own projects to deal with Peabody's unjustified control over our lives, we need to be relying on one another and the things we can create to circumvent our reliance on a police force that can evidently decide to beat the hell out of you as they please.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

A certain 97.1 talk show host, Breitbart.com editor, and CNN contributor has decided to use her national media platform to wage a bullying campaign against me by pestering the university I attend. Despite the fact that I'm not even talking about her and haven't for a long time, she used her radio program and Twitter feed to encourage people to harass my school without knowing what they're talking about, and the results were entirely predictable given her past history of generating death threats against college professors based on dishonestly edited audio clips.

First, Quincy, IL's Parker Lee "Chip" Gerdes, a collaborator of hers who previously threatened to slash my tires, picked up on her "ponytail" and "TA" language about me to push some homophobic jokes:

Then co-founder of the Gateway "Grassroots" Initiative Jen Ennenbach said that I was "heterophobic."

And Brooks Bayne, a creepy dude obsessed with the pernicious influence of "Jewish socialism", who is documented promising to work with the 97.1 host to harass my school, also made some bizarre sexual jokes:

Yup, just another day of smearing private citizens for this CNN contributer. Only this time, she's picking on someone who knows her game.

A Daily Kos diary has a very helpful guide for how to pressure radio stations that play Limbaugh, which might be the real key to making him actually accountable for his comments. Limbaugh currently makes a huge salary and radio stations pay big money to play his show, which could work against him. Brian Smith (@Moprog67 on Twitter) has started a list of local companies advertising on Limbaugh's show in St. Louis (on KMOX). Here's what he has so far:

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